In the trial - up to today ’s globose climate strikes , the major tech companies and their attendant luminaries have had much to say on matters of sustainability . Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in person announcedhis Climate Pledge , which promise to contribute the retail giant he runs to last zero carbon emissions by 2040 . Google ’s Sundar Pichaiannounced“the largest corporal leverage of clean free energy in history . ” And Microsoft laminitis Bill Gates has beendoing the interview unit of ammunition , dispensing his expertness on climate solutions .
Each military personnel runs , founded , and/or advises some of the most influential and knock-down corporations in human history . Each professes a desire to address the climate crisis . And yet , each is presently profiting mightily by helping crude oil companies accelerate that crisis . Amazon , Google , and Microsoft are assisting the likes of Chevron , ExxonMobil , and Shell in endeavors like rein AI to more expeditiously explore for new boring situation and using big data point to streamline the crude oil extraction process . They are all helpingto automate the climate emergency .
I am save this for issue on the solar day of the world climate strike with a dewy-eyed message for each of these Isle of Man and any CEO or executive director who stands to turn a profit in a standardized setting : You ca n’t have it both ways .
Photo: (Getty)
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-s-sweeping-climate-plan-is-full-of-gaping-holes-1838283067
You ca n’t believe yourself part of the resolution — which requires reducing carbon discharge , urgently on a massive scale — while still propping up and indue fossil oil companies , and allowing them to find new and good ways to locate , break , and burn oil . Your clean energy opening and mood philanthropy will mean nothing if your companies continue to directly exasperate the crisis in the first shoes . Sorry .
This is what I mean :
On Thursday , when a newsman ask Jeff Bezos if he would lop Amazon ’s ties to vegetable oil company , founder that grand of his own employee had publicly called on him to do so , he said , only , “ No . ” Bezos continued : “ We ’re going to work severely for energy companies . And our sight is we ’re going to sour very firmly to make indisputable that as they transition they have the estimable tools possible . ”
Of course , the tools Amazon provides vegetable oil companies are not intended to be used in any “ transition . ” Amazon ’s own websitelists the goals of one of these tools :
-Find Oil quicker
-Recover More Oil
-Reduce the Cost Per Barrel
You ca n’t have it both way , Jeff Bezos . You ca n’t betray AI - power puppet progress with the express target to help fossil fuel companies dig out more crude and gas out of the ground at the precise consequence it needs to stay buried and extol yourself seriously committed to fighting climate change . It does n’t cover .
Google , meanwhile , has afford an entire Oil & Gas division in Houston , designed to solicit more oilfield automation and Army Intelligence - enabled rock oil exploration business there . It has beenproviding AI tools to companies like Andarko , to help them better explore for new source of oil to bore . It has also , coincidentally , been competing with local clean push startups . You ca n’t have it both ways , Sundar Pichai . sporty energy steal are cracking , and Google has always been a leader in that arena . But it ’s meter to beak a side . Until the doors to the Oil & Gas division of Google are closed , your company too is exacerbating the crisis .
And a special word to Bill Gates : You have long seek to draw attention to the perils of climate change . You ’ve spoken openly and often about the need for more innovation in the cleantech sphere , and you have adorn in small - scale nuclear power and other ideas . Many view you as a champion .
Yet on the week of the mood bang , Microsoft announceda brand new partnership with Chevron and Schlumbergeraimed at increasing oil extraction rates . Beyond that , Microsoft has hosted exhibitions call “ Empowering Oil & Gas With AI ” and has cut major tidy sum like the one with ExxonMobil that will leave it to better enfeeble the Permian Basin of rock oil . The company you launch is doing more than perhaps any other tech caller to partner with fogy fuel interests .
You still advise Microsoft . If you wanted the fellowship to hack ties with crude and gas origin efforts , I have little doubt you could carry its administrator to update their corporate duty policies . Unless you want this festering star on your legacy to overshadow the entirety of your mood work , it ’s time to choose a side .
Look : It is not just that as a result of your company ’ initiative , more oil will be located , extract , and burn , more carbon emissions will enter the atmosphere , and climate modification will accelerate . You may , after all , rationalize this away by contend that the efficiencies you award oil colour companionship in their extractive enterprise pale in equivalence into the investments you might make in renewable ability and clear technologies , or donation to environmental nonprofits .
That is incorrect . By run with the fossil oil ship’s company at all , by sell them your engineering science and expertise , you are not only throwing them a lifeline and help to widen the fossil fuel era , you are imparting the piece of work itself with a seal of moral approving . You are entrenching oil interests in your business , and you are ascertain it will be harder to extricate those interests from our society and our saving — something that needs to start to happen yesterday .
peradventure opine telling Greta Thurnberg or any of the one thousand of other children take the air out of their schools because they are afraid for their future tense that you just need the oil companies to have the best tools available to them . That it ’s worth strike in a few supererogatory millions in alternate gross sources on top of your already record profits to serve oil colour companies speed up a planetary crisis . That it ’s just business .
Some of you simply may not manage , and the public - facing mood commentary is just part of the job . Others may have an actual interest in doing what is in your power to maintain a habitable climate , even if it means pretermit out on a lucrative oil contract or two . So I ’ll just say it again , in solidarity with all the Kyd and people andemployees of your companiesthat are walk out of their schools and jobs to make a statement about the kind of existence that is possible tomorrow : You too can take a moral posture and put a livable climate over a piffling special capital .
But you ca n’t have it both path . you may use your technologies to help reposition the fossil fuel earned run average , or you may gain by amplifying its pollutive output — and putting us all at further risk . Time to pick out a side .
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